


Buried Above Ground

by hertorpor



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Forced Pregnancy, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Literary References & Allusions, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Virginity, Slavery, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:55:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22490413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hertorpor/pseuds/hertorpor
Summary: The courier had an infernal indifference towards human order, in its limitations and restrictions. Her part was to keep everything shifting, for out of disorder grew triumph, out of disruption fresh seeds. So she whipped the world into a carnival, all for her entertainment! As if shallow stimuli could make her pain an abstraction.  Bursting from dread and hatred, a dynamic and violent life emerged. Anything to change the cards birth dealt her.
Kudos: 12





	1. The Truth, The Glow, The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’ll bury all my children. I’ll carry them to death. Oh, to linger in their stories, exhausted by their weight. My milk is gray and bitter but I’ll carry them each day.

There was an uncapturable air to Rosella. With her animated face, efficacious in its portrayal of thought, she could not shroud her ardor. She existed as a composite of Athena and Venus — when men attempted to conceive of a natural beauty, their mind created an image of her. They met her and sensed they had known her long ago; the huntress profile, the pointedness of her canines, the prominent lips that birthed her incisive thoughts, the voluptuous frame, the glossy black hair that encircled her head like a coronet of vines. All nerves, color, and esoteric brilliance, powerful men had sat before her and found it difficult to extricate themselves from her power. 

Some carried a charge which divided all they entered contact with, and some a force that banded people together. Rosella manifested unification; she was everybody's consort. She got cozy with the NCR, caravanners, Followers of the Apocalypse, many tribes, even raiders. Once a faction ceased being useful, she drifted to the next one. She refused to contemplate her life’s aim, contented living within chaos. This wanderer’s life was a solace. Never ceasing her journey, traipsing from city to city, roaming indefinitely with no direction. Roots did not occur to her; only the strange flowers that grew from the irradiated dirt excited her brief interest. She stopped, absorbed their scents and marveled at their enduring spirits, and again turned to new horizons. She loved everyone. Saw everything as equal yet unique, vibrant yet undivided. The appetite she had, to experience and know each person intimately, took her places high and low.

On this day, she took herself somewhere low. ‘In a sleazy bar, somewhere in Arizona, in a town she struggled to remember the name of, a few drinks in’ low, to be exact. Rosella was by no means a drinker. But for some jazzy folks, alcohol was the one thing that pulled them to speak from the heart. Sometimes she’d knock back a few hoping she would capture that energy. It did not take too long for a woman to seize her attention... An unusual spectacle, with an oblong face and a crop of brown hair, who vibrated with a readiness to spring at any excitement. Around her neck she wore a tropical bird’s plumage, all decorated and framing her collarbones with uncommon colors. She was an image, like the women on pre-war postcards. With a step that was a glide, she sashayed from patron to patron, singing of her vivid travels, signaling with her jeweled hands. All throughout with an expression coloring her girlish face as if she harbored a secret. This seemed to be a performance to Rosella. She admired her moxie. It entranced her. When their paths met, they studied each other with a stare of recognition. 

Rosella bought her a drink. The moon shined through the cracks in the walls, casting a spectral quality in the woman’s big amber eyes. Her cadences suggested European origin, and she introduced herself as the alias ‘Sparrow’. She spoke of a migrant commune that had wandered for hundreds of miles in pursuit of a promised homeland, foreseeing a nation with a fundamental ambition of developing culture and education. Pre-war societies focused far too often on law, on administrations, on the battles fought by the wealthy and trampling the insubordinate. They carried blueprints for a community that prioritized human connection and acquiring knowledge.

These foreign approaches to life puzzled Rosella, but she received them with an open mind. A herd with purpose outside self-preservation? This notion dizzied and delighted. Imbued with a shared passion for the forbidden, they talked as if they would never run out of words. By the time the bartender declared last call, Rosella had lost count of how many whiskeys she drank. Everything became silky. The two left the bar together. Drunkenly, she had informed Sparrow that the little town was full of cottages which people could rent for a few nights. Sparrow purchased a night in one, wrapped an arm around her, and assisted her a lighted cottage. Long-dead ivy choked it and it sat further back into the dunes than the others. It had a bed profusely covered in pillows. Face-first, Rosella fell into it, rumpling the blankets. Asleep in an instant.

Upon waking, the woman was absent. A note on the nightstand read ‘COME AT DUSK, OUTSIDE NORTH WALL—S’. She was never on time, but this woman was an anomaly. She made an exception. It was a quiet overcast evening, fat with opaque desert dust that often drove people indoors, that created a stillness as it hung like a blanket over the town. Right as the sun set, she went to the north. She did not care to conceal her enthusiasm for this adventure, although she feigned an air of nonchalance as she lounged in shade cast by a house, the brim of her hat tilted groundward, a cigarette fixed between her lips. Sparrow did not announce her presence. Without words, she sat across from her.

“We need somebody like you. Many become closed off and hostile, living in the wastes. They just live for the next roof. They never think about the possibilities.”

The commune wanted a worldly person to work for them, needed a hireling to kill off raiders, find trader routes, things of that nature. After last night’s rendezvous, Sparrow was confident that she was a perfect candidate. Her passion lacked much-desired direction that they could offer her. Promises of food, caps, and a tent to sleep in for freelance mercenary work sounded too good to be true, but idealism endured as her weakness. She agreed to her offer, which prompted Sparrow to insist on meeting the leader of the commune. The two made their way towards a temporary camp a half mile down the Gila river. Well-hidden by scorched trees that jutted out of the ground as if burned match sticks, a makeshift hut sat. Radio songs sung sweetly from behind the door.

The leader was striking—a tall, bearded man with piercing eyes and the face of a fox who called himself Callum. His shack was in organized disarray. Piles of books, holotapes on the floor, charts, and drawings tacked to walls. He professed he came with Sparrow from Red River valley in Texas. Rosella saw this as disingenuous; Both of their accents were distinct, not of American origin. Not Texan. But she did not press them to disclose their origins. There were many reasons to bury yesterday. They only spoke of the future. 

He posed lofty ideas about creating a utopia that fostered sciences and studies long abandoned by the need to prioritize survival. ‘The Jackdaws’, they called themselves. Their aim to forge a haven for wayward souls in the blighted wasteland endeared them to her. With a glowing face and an expanding smile, Rosella offered her services. At first, she did grunt work for them. Striking trade deals with caravans, seeking books in the rubble of libraries and schools, and finding resources — for all of which, they paid respectable sums.

After each long night she flocked to them. Without hesitation they gave hospitality. Their camp was picturesque and complex, a series of small irregular tents, each serving different purposes. In the makeshift medical tent, their doctor, June, patched her wounds. A nervous man who opted to go by Scout gave her access to their ammo stocks in their storage tent. The kitchen tent was where a redhead named Ginger fed her hearty dinners of bread and stew. A scribe called Faith, and a hunter called Jonah kept her company at the dusk campfire. To be among them was to belong with them. Every person who joined the Jackdaws came from a divergent background: bounty hunters, scientists, artists, politicians, NCR veterans, prospectors, ex-raiders, refugees fleeing violence. They showed themselves to each other in their difference, and it’s in this disclosure that action generated. They thought they could change the world.

In two short weeks, they transformed the wanderer. With knots in her stomach and a tremor in her hands, she asked to be a member of their commune. Family was an abstract concept to her before meeting them. But now that she knew the delights of intrapersonal connection, the merriments of belonging in a community, there was no going back. She became a teacher to the children and the occasional ambling traveler. They gave her limitless access to literature of all kinds. She read everything she came into contact with, from pulpy romance novels to Proust, agricultural textbooks to books on punctuation. There were scores of intellectual texts at her disposal. Sparrow joked that she always had her nose buried in a book. Yet she couldn’t help it—the wasteland felt small, disjointed, fragmented. History was the sinew that bound her world together. In the past, the multitudes of faded books scattered in rubble meant nothing to her. Now she quaked with anticipation whenever she found something as mundane as a cookbook legible.

Reading became more than a fixation. It became her religion. ‘Learn the vastness of the old world and its fruits, and you will know the mistakes of the past’, Callum said. Education was the key to resurrecting civilization. The knowledge she gained had reawakened her. Cartography became Rosella’s largest contribution to their goals. She devoted herself to aiding Callum in his quest for promised land, drawing charts of Arizona that read like treasure maps. This led them to St. Johns. For this gift, he offered her a position as his second-in-command. She accepted.

St. Johns was untouched by looters when the Jackdaws had found it. There were many buildings still standing, and they made quick work of constructing a few more. An old church dominated a series of smaller houses and dilapidated shops. A gully clogged with weeds bisected the center of the town, ran through it like a scar. A house belonged to Rosella. It was a fixer-upper, she said in perpetuity. There was a cloying smell of rust and no amount of elbow grease could quell its rheumatic creaks, but she loved that home.

-

When the frantic Scout went to see Rosella one evening, she was writing at her vanity by candlelight. In his frenzy, his knee connected with a little table next to her desk. Various books, perfumes, and flowers scattered across the floor. Lifting her head in a languid motion, tresses of black hair flowed like a stream and fell in masses down her neck. A juvenile cry died softly in his closed mouth; impish features contorted in an awkward expression.

"It's no problem," she dismissed, cutting off a breathless apology. 

"Sparrow told me to inform you that the sightings of the men in red have increased." 

This news horrified the other members of the tribe. She laughed. A laugh that was perpetual no matter what happened to them. Rosella had a piquant charm that struck others as improper, albeit strange and bewitching. She had an inhuman way of spinning horrific situations into humorous ones. Whenever considering Ceasar’s Legion, she could not help herself. They were more akin to clowns than warriors in her mind. One of her fingers dipped into a rouge beside her writing quills. 

"Well, that means they're closing in, aren't they? I thought they'd forgotten about us." Rouging her lips as she spoke. She glanced at him obliquely. Suspended in the dark air, Rosella’s burning eyes looked composed of saffron, reminiscent of a puma. He appeared unnerved by her and cleared his throat.

"Listen, Rose. Most of the time we see them in groups of two or three, but at sunrise today we saw seven. Sparrow knew one of them, called him a 'triggerman', said we should be afraid. She's ready to sound the alarms, said we should get ready to desert the camp." 

"Desert the camp?" Shocked, she reiterated his statement, wiping her fingers on a nearby cloth. Her abdomen turned into a skein of nerves. "Oh. We will be easy pickings out there. What are they thinking?" 

"I don't- I don't know." 

"Could you fetch Sparrow and June for me? Ah, and--" She retrieved a fruit from a basket on her vanity. "--give this cactus fig to her kiddo, she loves these things."

Nodding, he grabbed it from her. As he side-eyed the door, she took a cigarette out from behind one of her ears, and with it she gestured at the items he had sent askew. The sharp glow in her smirk was not that of nature. More fire than sunlight. 

"Don't trip on your way out," She said. It was a taunt but spoken like a flirt. Cheeks grew visibly hot while she put the cigarette to her lips. The precision of her gestures ritualized lighting a cigarette. He evaded eye contact with her and hurried out of the tent. Scout had a clumsy and vulnerable nature when in her presence that he hid poorly. How sweet, she thought. .

A few hours after the rendezvous, it didn't take him long to find her. June and her young daughter, Magpie, sat with Rosella at the central campfire. Scout walked halfway to them, pausing at the borderline of the campfire’s illumination, just outside her field of vision. Rosella was crying heavy hot tears that grieving lovers cry. Her shoulders shook violently with each sob, her hair askew, her face swollen. He debated making his presence known, but she was already aware of him. Without turning she spoke with a resonant, quavering voice. 

“Callum’s dead. They sent him back here—” A gasp jerked from her lungs, the sudden onslaught of emotion interrupting her, “B- Burning! He was st-still alive when we found h-him!”

“Nothing could save him,” June punctuated her account, exhibiting a maternal calmness as she stroked the sobbing woman’s hand, “The Legion’s threats weren’t empty. They intend on meeting us too, I imagine.”

-

When the Legion came for the Jackdaws, they looked to Rosella. She drew out many escape plans, keeping the faith with grandiose plots of fleeing to NCR-controlled land. But none of them bore fruit. They outmaneuvered and outnumbered them. As the red on the horizon grew, the remaining tribe felt their hope whittle away. In a chaotic tangle of her worship for life and destructive storms of instinct, she fell to her knees and told her family to surrender. They had nothing left to lose. Brahmin calves bleated pitifully beside their dead mothers, in pitted dirt they once trampled. Flies whisked the air, thousands of them, feeding on wilted bodies. Prehensile limbs of petrified trees bent groundward with the weight of bodies. Their warriors hung by their necks. The Jackdaws did not fight the Legion's conquest, yet they still executed the bulk of them. 

They dragged many bodies to the village's heart. Jutting out of the crude pile was the upturned face of an adolescent boy with sun-damaged cataract eyes. Pallid lips parted in an eternal grimace of pain; they had sundered his torso in two. The boy’s desecrated body sagged against a tribesman heralded as a prophet by some Jackdaws. They believed he could commune with god.

The surrender was like a wind carrying the survivors into an ocean of desolation. They took the young women in chains. Aching to shed their skin and tendon, they itched to walk as just bone and gristle into the river, and be swallowed just like their fathers, husbands, and sons. Even the strongest saw themselves fracture at the sight of the smoldering ruins of St. Johns. Rosella knew she had to learn to shape herself a new heart from mud and salt. 

Once she thought she could have no hatred in her heart. Expansion without conquest, compassion without asking for anything in return, understanding without judgement? Now confirmed to be an impossibility in the wastes. It struck idealism out of her, watching them execute her kinfolk. The homes? They could find new ones. The lives? No recovery. She could never look at something horrible and describe her hatred for it at length until now. Most of her family looked at the violent scene with detachment. She looked at it with a terrible lucidity. White-knuckled she swore that one day she would inflict the same agony that they had done to her. 

The Legion treated its conquests in the same way men treat prostitutes. They encroached on bodies that were not theirs then discarded them. Every vile siege left them with growing hunger and indifference. Caesar separated his soldiers from their old identities by making this the way of life. Rosella thought of them as only lost folks who wanted purpose at one point. Now they were unrepentant monsters wearing skin suits.

A legionary veteran kept throwing a glance her way as they chained the survivors together. Although he looked at her with a vague callousness, she saw a ghost of his humanity in his gaze. She closed her eyes to avoid her revelation; it hurt worse to think there was a human behind the Legion puppet. A human knowing, feeling, thinking as he slaughtered unarmed people. If confronted with their humanity, she would fall to pieces.

“Where are you taking us?” Scout asked. They gave no warning as a bayonet connected with his forehead. He gasped and clutched at the wound, red currents clotting in the disordered hair on his forehead. Rosella fell to her knees next to him, pressure on his head.

“We surrendered! What are you doing?!” Her voice came as a strained whisper.

“Your kind get no special treatment for cowardice,” the veteran spat, “And the next impudent slave won’t be treated so mercifully.”

“Slave?” Sparrow echoed from behind her.

He scowled back at her. “You speak when you’re spoken to. This is your first and final warning, whore.”

Nobody said a word for hours after that. As the daylight dwindled, they walked in crooked lines and watched the horizon with tired eyes. Rosella didn’t dare to look back at the rest of them, the mounting feeling of guilt swallowing her with every infernal step. A legionary shoved June to the ground next to her for lagging, and despite this display of cruelty, she did not turn her head. She wasn’t afraid of punishment. Being confronted with their agony, which she had decided was her fault. And it was as if she would become a pillar of salt if she looked upon them. 

A young recruit stopped them as they crossed a ravine. What she could make out from their stilted communication was “well-armed patrols, over the hills”, a comment that made a spidery vein in the veteran’s neck become pronounced. 

A deep exhale came from Scout. “The NCR, oh thank god…” he uttered, his shaky voice like that of a drugged man. Every eye fixed on him. In that moment he looked wild. Blood had branched from the collar of his shirt to the bottom hem. White and nervous, his face peaked out of his crimson-streaked hair. It appeared as if the slightest wind had the potential to send him toppling. He looked so small and panic driven, a wounded animal, inadvertently crawling into its den to die. 

“What did you say?” Hissed the veteran in a bewildered whisper. 

“My uncle’s in the NCR… an’ he said that... they’re bringin’ law to the land.” Speaking without premeditation while stumbling over an impression in the dirt, his delirious state became apparent. He fell onto his hands and knees. Then he attempted to rise to his feet, but his legs wobbled, so he sat on his haunches in resignation.

“You should see... see if you get them to come over... prolly got some bandages...” 

There was a tumultuous pause. June looked away, holding a bawling Magpie to her breast, attempting to soothe her agitation with languid strokes. Rosella thought about the Scout she knew at St. Johns — the curious one that found joy in everything, that reminded her of an excited puppy who came into every room with his tail whacking the furniture. The legionary closed the gap between him and Scout. His eyes were furnaces of great hatred as he drew his weapon. The look burned in her mind, and in her subsequent nightmares they were always there, glaring, standing on black air. 

The revolver pressed against Scout’s temple, which prompted June to cry out. Rosella closed her eyes to blink. There was a pop then thick guttural noises. Something splattered on her face and got in her mouth. Hot rust. She imagined it was tainted water and didn’t open her eyes. A strange sensation washed over her. Utter helplessness and agony coalesced. June screamed so loud that she felt it physically reverberate her eardrums.

“Quiet! Do any of you have anything else to say?” She could hear the veteran stomping around as he shouted this, circling behind her. Trying not to think about Scout laying prone in a growing pool of blood, she shook her head. Pools of anguish gathered in her stomach, nausea growing at June wailing, the sobs from the other captives, the gunpowder that smelled like burned wheat and Sulphur pits, the blood that tasted like metal and brine. It was a cacophony. They pulled her to her feet after a moment and forced them onwards. After one guard screamed at somebody for crying too loud, it was silent again.

Several days passed. Only words spoken by legionaries were audible. Bound in shared silence, their captives spoke through nonverbal cues. Rudimentary sign language quickly picked up as their way of communicating. When they set up camp, the soldiers bound them and growled threats of mutilation if they attempted escape. Fear could not stop them from communicating. Hope and optimism, those were Rosella’s quicksands. Countless books had the hero captured! They would prevail. A opening had to come. Washing away mourning with the trust of things working out. A coping mechanism. She whispered faith into their ears, kept them sane, kept them from becoming apathetic. Static, indifferent slaves. Efforts to mold them, as if made of wax, would prove fruitless if they held onto their identities and hopes.

Along the river they went. Time passed with irregularity. When they fed them, it was scraps. When given water, it was only to stave off dehydration. One woman, Ginger, said she saw a city on the horizon. Nobody saw it except for her. When she collapsed from thirst, they poured water down her throat with such violence, until she was choking and begging them to stop. Were they weeding out the weak? But strength played no role. It was a game of chance. Who would faint next from lack of nutrition?

A few of them gathered around the campfire. They spoke in hushed rhythms, careful to not wake the soldiers. To preserve their sense of self, they danced and sung under their breath. Songs of days gone by. They awoke to find the village storyteller’s tongue cut out. After a week of torment, many of them became vague mirages of their past selves. Now they stared at the ground, walked like ghosts, strange alloys of misery and anxiety, and forgot the words to their songs. 

It was high noon when they arrived at their destination. The tents in this place were more sturdy and constructed with the intent of permanence. There were hundreds of them. Passing men eyeballed them as if examining livestock. A few women slipped by them, struggling to carry massive backpacks, evading eye contact. Simultaneously, a shrieking legionary forced the surviving Jackdaws to their feet.

Caesar was a gentle savage in contrast to his veterans. If he had not been so flamboyant with his ensemble and flagged by ten well-armed guards, Rosella would have assumed he was another fresh-faced recruit. 

“Ave. Which of you is the leader?” He spoke at the two remaining men, June’s youngest sons. They cast pensive sidelong glances at each other. Was he not aware they executed Callum in the first strides of their invasion? Rosella thought it was a trick, another way to assess how weakened they were & how much success they had in whittling their direction down.

“Me,” She interjected, “Your legion killed our chieftain. I was his second-in-command. I made the call to surrender.” 

His expression swelled with an undefinable emotion. Like gratification, she thought. His men had all been blind and angry, but there was something casual and human about his mannerisms. The surrounding legionaries seemed ugly and feral in comparison.

“Ah, you were the one to wave the white flag,” Ceasar took a few strides towards her & the kneeling Jackdaws, “I am assuming this is a fraction of your kith and kin?” 

“We weren’t given a code of conduct, some died trying to protect--” She paused, a moment to stabilize herself against an influx of strong emotions. She felt naked, confessing she stood by in torment as they slaughtered her family. Putting a hand against her chest as if keep her balance, she continued “Many of us have a candid way of saying things. We don’t mince words. Your men didn’t like that.” 

“So, I’ve been told. A standout of the tribes I’ve encountered so far. You _‘civilized’_ pacifists have to know that you do not last in the wasteland. It was a matter of time. You should feel grateful that we got to you before raiders did.” 

“We’ve seen combat, but we avoid it. While other tribes fought, we carved a home out for ourselves and became disciplined. I surrendered because I couldn’t rationalize attacking. But I’m guessing you take pride in killing the vulnerable. There are less than half of us left.” She stated this with poise, accepting that they may punish her.

“It’s a pity that we executed so many. Your men look strong, and your women look like they will have virile offspring,” He said these things as if he were speaking to his shadow. It occurred to her he wasn’t talking to her, but at her.

‘Offspring?’ She mouthed. Oh. That was why they had killed every adult man and elder in their clan, but left the young women and children. Sparrow clutched her arm, aware of her revelation.

“Now I can be a fettered and ethical man!” Ceasar’s voice assumed the tone of an orator, as if giving a speech. “I could let the rest of you live if you profess loyalty to my legion and lay at my feet. Or I can be spiteful. I could tell my praetorians to crucify all that remains and make you watch.”

He spoke as if he endowed his drivel with sacred, poetic value. “The choice is yours.”

Rosella looked back to June to seek guidance. They talked to each other without words. Weary eyes said she would rather die than be a slave. But she was a mother—that fecund aspect betrayed her rationality. June’s head cast down at her hands, which stroked Magpie’s head of straw-colored hair. 

“We will go with peace, Caesar.” 


	2. Broken Chords Can Sing A Little

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On silver mount zion, all buried in ruins, we was dancing the hora until we vomited blood. Spinning like crazy, Shoshana was jonesing. The towers had fallen and the wind called out my grandfather's name.

Under pressure of division, the Jackdaws splintered and flew in all directions. A faction believing in humankind’s inherent morality fractured at Caesar’s persecution. Perhaps they had built a false concept of wholeness. Did the legionnaires not think of their mothers or sisters when they struck a cowering slave? Vulnerability posed a challenge to them; weakness shown by any tribe resulted in the legion electing them to punish, a test of their power. In Rosella, defenselessness roused an instinct to preserve. Humans retained a way of yielding to victimization, by numbing themselves into a passive state, folding themselves into a permanent fetal position. She guarded herself and others against this. She sought quick liberation from captivity, whipped by fear of a fate worse than death, yearning for a destructive force that could free them or bring an end to this intolerable life.

They segregated the men based on their fitness. Weak bodies joined the women while they enlisted the strong in their slave army. Exclusive roles assigned to men with medical expertise sectioned them off to remote camps; they were never seen again. Being unsuitable for recruitment meant either exploitation of any skills or being sold as pack mules to individual legionaries. A centurion bought the huntsman Jonah, who possessed an extensive knowledge of edible plants, to work as a cook at a fort along the San Pedro River. They split the remaining women and men between this base and its surrounding encampments. Ginger said the NCR called it Tombstone Junction, for they had lost countless scouting parties that drew near the city-like rows of tents that surrounded the fort.

The walk to the base tested their endurance. The group turned into an abstract composition, a sequence of faces contorted with anguish, dilated unfocused eyes, foreheads dampened with perspiration, parched burning throats. Rosella admired June’s ability to hold herself together for the sake of Magpie. Even though they auctioned off her sons, she absorbed herself in her caregiving role for her daughter. Magpie nestled against her back as she struggled to keep up the punishing pace. Two legs dangled around her waist. Rosella offered to carry her, but June declined with a shake of her head. Physical strain provided distraction. A mother capable of immense devotions.

To be cognizant of the spirit of love, Rosella became saturated with optimism. June postponed emotional death by suffering, by forcing herself into the moment, by giving, by carrying her girl until her knees gave out. There came a point when she fell to exhaustion, after many miles. Rosella carried her daughter for the rest of the journey. When Magpie asked where they were going in her cherub voice, she replied with a soothing tone. “We don’t know yet, but it will be okay. We will survive.”

When the group reached the fort, they realized Caesar’s Legion constructed it atop a smoldering settlement. Only foundations & detached fenceposts remained, and they were strewn about as if entrails. They had drained life out of it. She walked by the charred buildings with anxious eyes. Opportunity presented itself to her within the soot. In a swift motion, she dislodged a piece of wood from a half-standing fence. The fragment of the singed structure created charcoal, a substitute for ink in times of hardship. An instrument to write with would come in handy when planning their freedom. She did not intend on staying longer than a few days in bondage. She made a mental map of the place, noting where certain soldiers patrolled and where they stationed the least. Belief in the probability of a quick freedom wilted as they fit collars around their necks. At least they did not find the burnt wood in her sock.

Months passed. They assigned alternating jobs to the women for maximum efficiency—Rosella worked as a builder one day and a beast of burden the next. At night they assaulted the slaves at random. She tuned it out, the one thing that she withdrew from. The very end of the day developed into a time to share spirited talk and plot escape. A supply caravan passed through the camp biweekly. This became her periscope into the outside world. Xander root was inconspicuous as currency, and the only profitable item she got her hands on. Baskets of the root earned her books, trinkets, whatever the caravan could part with. This paltry collection of informational texts and tools she amassed put her in considerable danger. With great hesitation she allowed Sparrow, Ginger, and June to borrow to her assortment of goods. But when she gradually permitted entry to those outside her circle, she became aware that the slave camp was not a stranger to contraband. Rosella traded for tools that would forge a path to freedom, whereas most slaves bought items that functioned as reminders of the outside world and the lives they once had. Who could blame them? Oh, how they missed the forbidden luxuries of even the most common novelties. Detergent, alcohol, toys, junk food, scented soap, cigarettes, chems… Under the table, every trinket and treat imaginable circulated through the camp. If someone was caught with any smuggled goods, bribery would keep the soldiers quiet. Caution was second nature. Yet these minor comforts were band aids on a gaping head wound.

Rosella religiously kept a journal to map out their escape. She reserved early mornings for meetings about the imminent uprising, led by all the impassioned Jackdaws. However, the Legion’s punishing lifestyle threatened to mangle their willpower. Some slaves had been there far longer than them; the older, veteran slaves were totally apathetic towards the newcomers, staring with unresponsive expressions, twisting themselves into eternal submission. ‘So, the longer the period of captivity, the deeper the resignation,’ Rosella concluded. When she witnessed their docile behavior, their half-lidded eyes as if drugged, the hitch in their gait signifying impairment from frequent flogging… she first saw a reflection of the inevitable. Future as she knew it. ‘No fucking chance,’ she promised herself, ‘I would sooner drop to my knees and beg for crucifixion!’ Numbing themselves into paralysis was an attempted adaptation to the unadaptable. There was no way she would settle for this life. Only freedom lived.

At night, behind closed eyes, prodigious webs of ideas and schemes danced behind her eyes. She struggled against becoming weary at how daunting it was, the juggling of all their prophecies, orders, strategies. Time exposed her to coldness, for she recognized how far from finished their escape plans were, how high up in the clouds and far from realization they were. Just as things clicked into place, more faults became apparent, and solutions were posed — an ever-expanding entanglement, impossible to be simplified. Further complicated by the demands of the legion, she felt overwhelmed and at her limit. Then her journal ran out of pages, and when she asked the caravanner if they had any blank books, he told her she was out of luck. She began scrawling in the margins of books, then over the text of novels she deemed ‘fluff’. Every wrench thrown at her was either dodged or repurposed. But things changed with the others as tensions grew higher and people became restless. Desperation for a concise plan made tempers hot.

“Now there are two ways that I could see this working: we somehow found enough jet to dope up every centurion and legate in the camp, or we find a stash of mini-nukes and blow ourselves up!” June chided, anger turning her whisper into a rasp. “And if you think we can get even ten people out of here while they’re distracted? I think you’ve lost it, Rose.”

“Maybe we could get enough fuckin’ jet if you didn’t spend all of your caps using it…” Ginger mumbled, breaking a long abstinence from the discussion.

“Are you serious? It was ONCE, Ginger. ONCE!” June looked as if she were on the verge of outburst. “You’re brave to cast the first stone. Who ate an entire box of Sugar Bombs to herself, in front of five of your starving family members? Wasn’t me!”

“Enough!” Rosella interjected, rising both of her hands as her gaze swiveled between them. “We need to focus; we cannot let our nerves get to us. We are sisters. All that remains is our family. I have been drained of my patience.” She looked disappointed as her head swiveled to June, “Petty insults—” Her eyes darted and made contact with Ginger, “—inane criticisms—” She made a sweeping gesture towards Sparrow and Faith, “—And total non-participation?” The two looked disgruntled at being called out, “We are all better than this! I need everybody’s help, and the more we bicker the more time we waste. We are nearing our first year in bondage! For everybody’s sake, we will not have a second.”

“Yeah, not a second,” June agreed, embarrassment slackening into her usual serious demeanor. “Let us aim to be gone before Sparrow’s due. We don’t want to know how these barbarians handle birth, seeing how violently they handle death.”

“Oh no! Don’t remind me, please!” Sparrow groaned, wistfully looking down at the budding roundness of her stomach. A sudden swelling of nausea hit Rosella. Labored breath became audible as she combatted the increasing queasiness. June opened her mouth to say something, but as her eyes drifted over Rosella, the words died with a choked sound. All the fresh blood had drained out of Rosella’s face. Disturbed, her commanding expression withered into a pained one.

“Rose?”

“Ah sorry, uh—” She struggled to choke out words as her hand rose to her mouth, suppressing whatever her body was rejecting.

Ginger leaned over to ask if she was okay, but Rosella was quick to rise and rush to the tent's threshold. A sickening, familiar guttural sound bubbled from her throat. The circle broke as they all scrambled to assist her. Intuitively, they knew what this meant. After Faith had guided her out of the tent’s entryway, she fell to her knees and retched with painful force. The fury of her sickness crawled under her skin, its domination of her senses making her shiver. It was the shiver of unconscious knowing. When the harbinger of the illness became clear in her mind, she became angry. Almost vengeful. But that flare of anger died into terrible sadness. She was aware of the symptoms. It had to be pregnancy.

The knots of Legion slavery closer around her throat. Recruits on night duty approached to demand why the slaves had left their quarters, then turned on their heels once they saw the state Rosella was in. Vomit came until her throat felt singed by bile. Even when nothing more came up, she stayed on her knees, stunned and trembling with distress, aware of the impeding storm.

\----

Dreams were a constant reminder of the paradise they had built. Rosella tried to view them as interludes between the conflict and pain. She often resisted waking up, closing her eyes tight as if it would transport her back to that place. Memories of her life at St. Johns were gifts. However, there too were scenes that distorted into sinister ghosts of what they once were, as if the subconscious was abusing her for her inadequacy, for her inability to shepherd them to freedom. This still was a welcome deliverance from reality. That lovely home at St. Johns, with its splintered floorboards and broken radiators, was like the bower of heaven. It symbolized the inverse of the Legion’s fort.

The dream today started like any other. Fruits. Visitors. Laughter. A life of pure flow, without order, without imbalances of power. Misty-eyed, with his large hands gesturing wildly as he spoke, Callum preached with a fanatic’s passion. Poetic prophecies spun everyone around him into a joyous rhythm, and the Jackdaws began dancing as if his words were music. Through their love and companionship, the faint impression of wholeness felt less like a memory. Frolicking as they encircled her, motion appeared to run their forms into each other like watercolors. The community center was large, with its church windows opening it up to sunlight. She could see trees, and the rustic facades of the pre-war cottages across the way. Her own home was there, no longer smoldering like the Legion left it. She felt a morbid longing, a wish that she perished during the destruction in her community. A hand crept over her torso to caress her pregnant belly.

“Wouldn’t it be better if you died here, softly, in the comfort and warmth?” Words from Callum’s lips, as he looked down at the curvature of her abdomen. She gaped at him, alarmed. Skirts and limbs billowed out, indistinguishable from each other, each word oiling their pirouettes. The inquiry ripped her from the euphoria and sent her into the arms of disillusion. Over and over, in the throes of distress, she had asked her unborn child that very question. It brought great guilt upon her whenever she asked it. It was desperation, a surrender to her. Callum vocalizing it was a shattering of the mirror.

The tempo of the Jackdaws dancing slowed. All the men stopped and moved towards the back of the room as the women in the group to continue their waltz. Callum stepped away to poise himself in front of Rosella. Grey eyes regarded her as if she was the centerpiece of the room. Intoxicated by shared happiness, the woman did not notice their stomachs bulging with pregnancy. Ripe breasts, round stomachs, rosy cheeks. All movement came to a halt as Rosella saw the state of their bodies. No more fluid motion or warmth. Every one of them stopped as if paralyzed by her revelation. Sorrow pulled her to the ground, and when she went to her knees, they all came with her.

“It is full of ugliness; it is born of pain. You must let what weakens you die. You have not tasted the most defeating cruelty. Your child will be lost. It will destroy your spirit of creation.” Abruptly, his face twisted before her eyes. Burns with no flame! To witness an invisible flame rendering him unrecognizable was to replay the memory of watching his writhing figure die at her feet. Singed and cauterized flesh devoured his features as he spoke. “Children born of pain die in their own.” He spoke as his lips fused together from the growing burns. A dismayed shout surged out of her mouth, but the air had left the room. Callum’s eyes melted out of his head to fall like candle wax down his cheeks. Sobs shook her shoulders. Vivid sensory recollections of the smoking carcass of St. Johns crashed into her mind. Smell of charred flesh, wails of grief in the distance, crucified dissidents begging for swift deaths, Scout face-down in a spreading pool of blood. Scout, brave young Scout, with a fissure in his head the size of a baseball, twitching as he died like a dog in a ditch.

“Hey... Hey, Rose. it’s okay…” A distant voice hushed. “You must wake up…”

-

Awareness of a hand against her chest stabilized her. She awoke with a sharp inhale through her mouth. Whatever horror carried over from the dream dissipated when she saw Sparrow’s worried expression. Her deep-set eyes gave a mystical quality as they peaked out of a curtain of inky hair. Her concern grounded her. Rosella inhaled a powerful breath and drew herself into a sitting position. After the vertigoes of the dream ebbed, she stared at Sparrow as if holding her in her gaze would tether her back to reality. Sparrow developed a tendency to twist a stick in her black hair in lieu of a ribbon. Months of consistent sun-exposure had deepened the tone of her skin, left it freckled and bronze. As the jewels she enjoyed in her freedom became unattainable, she took up weaving, creating necklaces of dried grass and bark. Brown hair once well-coiffed and shoulder-length now drooped like a mop around her collarbones. Her mouth resembled a living, giggling rose, a proclamation of her sensuality. God, somehow she just now noticed the hollowing of her cheeks from undernourishment. Already a woman with an angular face and a sharp structure, the weight loss altered her features from elegant charmer to a person ravaged by an illness. But the lightening in her eyes still endured.

“Sorry I woke you not-so-gently.” Sparrow apologized, taking both of her hands as a worried gesture. “You made many ‘kicked puppy’ sounds. Didn’t sound like a very pleasant dream.”

Rosella gave her a sleepy smile and stroked one of her palms with her thumb. “There’s no need to be sorry,” She replied, “My god though. Unpleasant is an understatement. Every night I miss St. Johns. But it’s like time is souring the memory so I cannot enjoy it anymore.”

“Maybe your dream’s trying to say something about your desires?”

“Yeah, I think it’s trying to say ‘get me out of here! I haven’t slept in a bed in over a year, please, I’m tired of molerat stew and stale bread!’” Rosella said with a smile. Sparrow did not meet her look as she pensively stroked her hand over Rosella’s pregnant stomach.

Less than a month earlier, the lack of food and physical strain caused Sparrow to miscarry. Emerging from the medical tent covered from her waist down in a crimson-colored mist, she held the stillborn to her chest, concealed in a rag. No words could describe the shame when a recruit handed her a wooden serving spoon to dig it a shallow grave. Often Rosella would look down at her pregnant stomach, think about the limp baby being lowered into the earth, still glistening with waters of the womb. When she recalled this memory, she cried until her emotions were distant apparitions.

A bond between the two had blossomed because of the shared trauma. Sparrow assumed the responsibilities Rosella could no longer carry out in her state, mothered her as if she were her lost infant, and bribed the cooks for second servings. Had the death created two mothers? One without a child, but her endless sacrificing indicated the hallmarks of a mother.

“Can I…?” She raised an eyebrow at her stomach and gave it a soft pat. Rosella nodded without hesitation, pulling her rough-hewn tunic up to expose her bump.

Coarse brown locks brushed against her skin as Sparrow leaned closer. The shell of her ear felt cold against her skin, to such an extent that she cringed. This had become a routine since she lost the baby. To live vicariously through Rosella was a manageable way of coping. Little else helped. At least her methods of coping were constructive. She could be reducing communication to only nods like Faith or in perpetual Jet withdrawal like June. Somebody had to stay lucid. If not for the sake of hope, for the sake of their children’s futures. Sparrow let out a sudden overjoyed gasp. A fluttering sensation spread through Rosella as the contour of an arm sprung from her abdomen.

“Ginger! Come look!” Sparrow squealed. “He’s kicking!”

Seconds later, she could hear the tent flaps rustling. Such a quick kid. Looking up from her own belly, Rosella greeted her with a smile. There stood sweet Ginger, with her asymmetrical face, the red hair shaggy and coiling around her jawline, the big gray eyes wild, her voice tender, her smile trusting, singing while she walked over.

“You’re lookin’ ripe as hell, Rose! Jesus!” She blurted as she flopped down next to them, recently chipped front teeth giving her a girlish lisp. “It’s gonna come shootin’ out of you any day now.”

Lax, spiraling laughter came from Rosella. “I sure hope so. I have heard some women feel like they are glowing when during pregnancy. This feels more like… burning and swelling,” She groaned. “And like I am a host to a parasite that is going to claw it’s way out.”

“Wouldn’t that be nuts if we gave birth that way? Or if we like threw it up instead of pushing it out of our bits?” Ginger quipped, receiving a shove and a disapproving glare from Sparrow. “What? I’m just puttin’ the idea out there. It don’t hurt to make light of shitty things!”

“Don’t want you to put these ideas in the head of her, not in this sensitive state. Were you raised in a barn?” Sparrow hissed back, her accent deepening as her displeasure heightened.

“As a matter of fact, yes!” said Ginger. Rosella acknowledged this response with a snort, which she took as an endorsement. They cut their lively chatter short due to an advancing clamor. With an intensity of a knee-jerk, Sparrow snaked her hand around Ginger’s head, cupping her mouth. In a slow motion, Rosella pulled her tunic over her exposed belly and rose to her knees, tucking them under her bottom. 

Through the canvas wall, the sound of heavy footfalls drew near. The three women exchanged glances. Silence fell over the group, a breathless anticipation mounting as the steps advanced. Sparrow listened for a moment, then held up one finger. ‘Just one,’ she mouthed. More than that meant serious trouble, this they knew. A flock of legionnaires dragged off those who stepped out of line-- when it happened, they all held their breath and prayed they would not return their kindred with missing limbs or sewn-shut orifices. A lone legionary tended to bark but not bite. The steps stopped and lingered right outside the tent’s only exist.

“Do my ears deceive me? Am I hearing whores skipping out on their duties?” A male voice hissed.

Why did they always have to draw it out? Rosella would have preferred that he came in and roughed them up a bit instead of taking pleasure in their fear. Maybe life here was so boring for a soldier that this was how they get their kicks. Instill a climate of dread, set the stage, relish in the distress! For no gain or reason, just to see a couple of young women quaking in fear of his power. If they were on equal footing, she would spit in his face, but there was more to lose than an eye if they punished her. Alas, the Legion did not fear beating a pregnant woman. Violence even at their own expense.

Sparrow answered his question with clear inflection, “We were checking on our pregnant sister.”

“That is not an excuse to waste daylight,” he replied. Although his pointed statement frightened her, his tone softened at the awareness of Rosella’s condition. “If exceptions were made for every infirm slave, every one of you would have an excuse to not work.”

As a unit, they hitched their breath, recoiling while he brushed aside the entry curtain. Assuming postures to show weakness out of fear of cruelty, the two other women averted eyes and bowed heads. But Rosella did not. Free hand shifted to rest against her stomach as she observed him. Legion-issued scarf pulled down and bunched around his neck, revealing a boyish freckled face. Could not be older than 25, she noted. Puffed out chest, expression of stone, looking down his nose at them, he held himself as if God built him for the Legion’s brutality. The skin on his hands was white with strain at keeping them in tight fists, but he lacked the bitterness the veterans marked themselves with. When he looked at her, she did not show submission, a welcoming smile planted on her lips. The unwarranted warmth appeared uncomfortable for him, only acknowledging it with a clearing of his throat.

“If I catch any of you neglecting your assignments again, there will be consequences. This is your only warning,” he said. As he spoke, he maintained eye contact with Rosella. “And you,” he called attention to her with an interjected finger. “Lowly bitches are meant to prostrate before their superiors. Be grateful I am sparing you of the rod until you give Caesar pups.”

With distress, both women stood. The jolt caused knees to audibly crack with strain. Despite his menace, Rosella rested her gaze on him for a moment longer. Then she conceded with sluggish movements, bowing her head as she folded into a pose of worship. She wanted to laugh. ‘Pups? Wonder if he came up with that one himself,’ she thought. It amused her to think Caesar taught the youth that about the process of childbirth, as if a woman had a litter of infants like a dog.

“Now get yourselves in order!”

When she rose off her knees, all she noticed were Ginger’s eyes, the distress in them, wild swimming pupils as her eyes lowered from Rosella’s stomach to her feet. It took a moment for her to register what had happened. Clear fluid ran down her calves and onto the dirt, winding over her cloth shoes, pooling on the ground. With this last stage of pregnancy fulfilled, she parted from her hopes for escape, all at once. Self-deceptions dissolved, in its place a yawning void of devastation manifested. She put a hand over her heart and screamed. Eyes black with languor, howling, furious, like a beast defeated with its throat in the jaws of its enemy. Even the legionary rushed to assist her, but she shrank away from him, sobbing, the world spinning around her as she descended into panic.

Her water broke.

-

It felt like a rare day. It was overcast, an irregularity in the Mojave. The drums of thunder, scent of wood-smoke, and slaps of rain against the parched soil composed an orchestra, one that set the stage for a tumultuous birthing. On the fourth day of labor, the crawling agony had left Rosella a heap of gasping pleas. Pleas for anything, for god to make it stop, for the damn thing to get out already, for swift death. She heaved, screamed, writhed, imagining she was dying in her own blood and mucus. Few intelligible thoughts entered her mind, as if the needles of pain bisecting her abdomen were stripping her of all lucidity. When she pushed, it was with the assumption that she would die, as if everything inside of her would be pushed out, and her body itself would open and dispense her organs, her soul, her sinew. A hand rested against her forehead, then a voice urged her to push harder, which she responded to with an animal howl, expelled from the very crux of her being. There was a collective gasp from everybody in the room.

Regrets, shattering visions of what sort of life she could have given to her child, the looming failure of her motherhood and her leadership, simple motherhood lying dead, hope sapped from their world. A shiver, knowledge of presence, feverish clawing at the cot, on her back wailing until a sudden release. Muscles relaxed as a mass fell just short of the bloody cot and into waiting hands. Silence, then the signature wails of a healthy baby. Rosella’s eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, focusing on the light bleeding through the webbed stitching, the initial shock paralyzing her reactions. Sighing as the painful contractions ebbed, her clarity of thought began to resurface.

"A girl, Rose, a baby girl! So beautiful!" Faith piped. 

Big, grateful tears surrendered to gravity down her red cheeks as Faith handed her the baby. The magnitude of her creation hit her as her baby writhed in her arms. From nothing, she had brought forth life. Rosella could hardly bear to touch her the baby in her state of fragility, but she pressed a kiss against the unknit bones of her crown. The body was riven open, mauled, her innards disturbed, but it dwarfed the pain in the limelight of her love. The first thing she noticed about her child was her enormous hazel eyes, like reflections from the aspect of an angel. She had a crown of luxurious curly black hair, still slicked with the remnants of afterbirth. A name came to mind, one from a book of origins unknown, and she spoke it without premeditation.

“ _Andromeda._ ” she whispered, pressing her newborn close to her breast. 

The family of slaves crowded around, a whirlwind of cooing and doting womenfolk. They had decided to not dwell on the certainty of the child’s enslavement. This was a day reserved for celebration of new life. Rosella replayed this beautiful memory in her head frequently, running underneath most days like an old holotape. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after editing & organizing, here is the second chapter! after this chapter the themes and plot will get more heavy so be prepared for that. also the perspective is switching to andromeda! i'll be able to work faster now that the setting is out of the way (for the most part).


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